We had our hearing with the planning department today, and they voted unanimously to allow our lot merger! This is great news. It's the first, most difficult victory in the ridiculously long process of letting us cut a door in the wall between the club and the pizza restaurant: it means that soon, DNA Lounge and DNA Pizza will have the same street address according to the city, and will be technically a single building.

I think it went so smoothly because we spent so much time and effort (and money) up front, making sure that we pre-loaded our application packet with answers to any question they might think to ask, including a sound report to head off anyone who might claim that we're too loud, and letters of support from several of our close neighbors.

After this, our blueprints have to be approved by the Department of Building Inspection and probably half a dozen other city agencies, which is going to take several months (but at least public hearings won't be involved). Then after that's done, we can alter the liquor license to cover both spaces.

In the meantime, we also managed to get construction permits for a bunch of the work upstairs of the pizza place, which is mostly the construction of new bathrooms. We ended up splitting the construction project into two parts so that we can get started on the relatively uncontroversial part sooner.

The wheels turn slowly. But if you watch long enough, you can almost see them turning...

Google interior view question: Do you know if they took photos of your bathrooms? I browsed through the shots available of DNA Pizza and of Butter across the street.

The interior view is incredibly useful for someone in a wheelchair who wants to determine beforehand if a visit is going to be worth the hassle. You can tell that it's an easy roll-in to DNA Pizza, but Butter's doorway might be too narrow for a wide chair. For a place that sells beer, the next question is: can you get a chair into the bathroom?

Note that as they're thousands of miles away, I'm not particularly interested in DNA Pizza's bathrooms, just whether Google's taking the photos to be able to show their accessibility.